


Hard Way Home

by manic_intent



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, M/M, No Jack Marston, That fix-it AU where the gang splits up before Chapter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 13:23:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18074201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: The sun was beating down hot over his throat and cheek when Arthur next woke to the land of the living, which he announced by flailing and trying to sit up. A hand shoved him back down onto the bed of dirty straw and clothes Arthur had been lying on, and a vaguely familiar face peered at him overhead. It was the newcomer, Sadie. Her blonde hair had been hacked short, and the grief and disorientation on her face had hardened into grimness.“You up,” Sadie said. She had a hoarse snarl of a voice, a wounded animal forever wounded.





	Hard Way Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Acephalous](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acephalous/gifts).



> Prompt for Acephalous: RDR2, Arthur/John, Fix-It 
> 
> Thanks everyone who participated in Fandom Trumps Hate this year! Whether you donated, contributed, or just RT’d and raised awareness. I talked to someone recently who’d lost hope about people — they asked me if I really still believe that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. I do. Sometimes it bends backward, but if enough people push it in any small way they can, even if it’s in a way that you don’t think is very consequential, we’ll get there. :) So do what you can! (And PLZ, American peeps, if you can vote, vote) 
> 
> I’d actually written 2 fix-its for this pairing at this point so I had to think a little on how else I wanted to handle the prompt. Then I remembered: I have a few friends who don’t want to move to/past Chapter 4 in the story… they’d rather stay around 2, where “at least everyone is alive and happy” ahaha so, here is a fic about just that.

Arthur got shot while they were trying to rob Cornwall’s train, because he’d been yelling at Lenny to get back in cover and hadn’t noticed a man on the roof. Afterward, when he’d regained consciousness stowed in the back of a wagon, he’d laughed at the irony until his ribs had hurt too much to laugh, then he’d passed out to the vague impression of Charles trying to shush him.

The sun was beating down hot over his throat and cheek when Arthur next woke to the land of the living, which he announced by flailing and trying to sit up. A hand shoved him back down onto the bed of dirty straw and clothes Arthur had been lying on, and a vaguely familiar face peered at him overhead. It was the newcomer, Sadie. Her blonde hair had been hacked short, and the grief and disorientation on her face had hardened into grimness. 

“You up,” Sadie said. She had a hoarse snarl of a voice, a wounded animal forever wounded. 

“Guess so,” Arthur croaked. Sadie sniffed. She leaned over the side of the wagon, gesturing for someone Arthur couldn’t see. Arthur looked around blearily. They were trundling down a road on an unfamiliar land, the browning grass studded with cacti, the blue horizon a jigsaw of reddish plateaus. “The hell are we?” Arthur asked. 

“South of the border,” Sadie said.

“ _Mexico_?” Arthur said, incredulous. “The fuck?” 

John rode up along the side of the wagon, Old Boy snorting as he got close. “Hey, Arthur. You better?” 

“Ain’t dead yet.” Arthur stared at John, a little blankly. The last he’d seen John, John was still bedridden. Shaky as hell and with terrible scars over his scalp and face, bleeding everywhere. Now John looked like his usual scruffy unshaven self, his scars already fading to an ugly pink, rumpled in an old hat and. “Shit. How long have I been out?” 

“You got infected something awful,” Sadie said. She had a big straw hat jammed over her head and was wearing a loose white shirt, a red bandana, and brown trousers. She had a holstered pistol buckled to one hip. Sadie met Arthur’s confused stare with a loud sniff. “Yes, I knows how to use it.”

“She’s done good,” John said. He nodded at Sadie respectfully. “Buncha’ desperados tried to hold us up near the border and Sadie helped send ‘em off.” 

“Why’re we even in fucking Mexico?” Arthur struggled to sit up. It winded him to do so, and his shoulder ached fiercely. The wagon was in the middle of a familiar line of small patchwork prairie schooners, the covered wagon right behind him driven by Pearson and Abigail. They offered him a little wave. People on horseback were sprinkled down the line, far fewer than there should be. “Where’s Dutch?” 

“Yeah, about that,” Sadie said. Charles and Uncle were bringing up the rear, Javier and Hosea at the front. Tilly was driving one of the wagons along with Mary-Beth. The Reverend, Molly, and Mrs Grimshaw were on the last. Karen, like Sadie, was dressed like a man, keeping a watchful eye on the horizon along with Lenny.

“Where's the rest?” Arthur asked, rubbing his aching temple. 

“Dutch heard that Sean’s been moved someplace. Took Strauss, Micah, Bill, and the new guy to check it out,” John said.

“Weren’t we gonna settle down south near Valentine once the winter thawed?” Arthur vaguely remembered something along those lines. 

“Yeah, we passed a lynch mob on our way down. We sent them packing but it was too late for the poor bastard. Lenny and Tilly had some misgivings after that so Javier said he knew a place way south, down past the border where we could wait out the heat from Blackwater.” 

Arthur grunted. He lay down gingerly on the wagon, trying to let the snorts of the yoked horses and the trundle of the wheels calm him down. “So we split up?” 

John nodded. “Dutch didn’t reckon that Sean had much time.” 

“Shit.” Arthur closed his eyes. “Okay.” He didn’t feel too good about Dutch going off on business like that without him, but hell, Dutch was an old hand at canny business. 

“You don’t sound happy about it,” Sadie said. 

“Ain’t nothing to be happy over. Hosea and Dutch considered hiding down south once. Shit went bad fast, lots of misunderstandings. We came back north with more scars, less money, and one scrawny kid who didn’t even speak English at the time.” 

“Ha,” Javier said, from further up the road. He’d always had keen hearing. “English is an ugly language.” 

“Won’t argue with you on that,” Arthur said. 

Some days he wished he could pick up languages as easily as Lenny or write as well as Mary-Beth, but he was more or less content with what he was. A big man with a gun. Having to be an invalid wasn’t a novel experience, given the way he attracted trouble and bullets, but Arthur didn’t like it. He didn’t like lying still, never had. Didn’t like the chatter from the wagons, even from the few people he cared to treasure in the world. He closed his eyes and wished himself along on the prairie, a good horse beneath him and the sun tickling his skin, no one else around for miles. The better parts of the man he was preferred the quiet.

#

The place Javier led them to turned out to be the burned out remains of a ranch in the shadow of a sloping plateau. “Pretty defensible,” Arthur said approvingly, as Charles described it to him. “With the plateau at our back, we could have the scout fire up top. See for miles around.”

“That’s what I thought,” Charles said, in the amused way he got whenever he’d already thought about something and was just waiting for The White Man to get around to his point of view. 

“Could’ve just told me so,” Arthur said, flashing him a wry grin. “Ain’t like I don’t trust you.” 

“You need to keep your mind active.” Charles had joined up less than a year back, a half Native, half African-American whom Hosea had met casing the same joint. They’d hit it off somehow, taciturn as Charles liked to be and gregarious as Hosea was. Charles was a big man, his hair worn short to his scalp, his clothes a loose-fitting tunic and buckskin breeches, always with a bow ready at his back and pistols at his hips. Good man, too. Too good a man for this kind of life. 

“Ha, ha,” Arthur said. Under Mrs Grimshaw’s directions, the camp was setting up quick. Arthur was sitting on his cot in his tent, smoking. 

“This place isn’t too bad.” Charles nodded at the burnt out house. “Could get that fixed. Grazing's all right. Cattle and livestock ‘round here’s cheap. We could buy or rustle some up. Live off the land as ranchers.” 

“I guess,” Arthur said. He tried to imagine it. Putting in an honest day’s work as a cowboy. Calving animals, mucking them out. Milking cows and worrying about rain. 

“You don’t sound so sure,” Charles said. He lowered his voice, again amused, leaning a hip against the barrel that Arthur used as a table for his shaving mirror. 

“It’s the plan.” Arthur had never questioned Dutch’s Plan before. He looked past Charles at the orderly camp, to where Hosea was having a word with Pearson. Maybe sensing Arthur’s attention, Hosea looked up, smiled, and walked over. 

“Arthur, Arthur. Yet another close one,” Hosea said. He nodded at Charles. 

“Charles was thinking this was a good place to put down roots,” Arthur said, keeping his tone neutral.

Hosea shot them both a shrewd look anyway. “And what do you think?” 

“I ain’t that much for thinking,” Arthur said honestly, “and I reckon Charles has got better instincts than me.” 

“Well,” Hosea said, paused, and set his hands on his hips. He looked uncomfortably older all of a sudden somehow, with his trim silvery profile set against the unbroken horizon. “Well. I’m an old man myself. Being an outlaw ain’t much of a life for an old man. I’m slowing down.” 

“You got us watching your back,” Arthur said, trying to sound reassuring. He’d never seen Hosea this pensive before. Hadn’t guessed that something like this could’ve been eating at him. 

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, my boy,” Hosea said, patting Arthur on the arm, “but I don’t like thinking that maybe I’m getting less good at watching _your_ back. Charles, this idea of yours, let me sit on it for a while.” 

“Sure,” Charles said. He pushed away from the barrel. “I’m going to ride out. See if I can catch us something fresh for dinner.” 

He wandered off and Arthur watched him go. “You really think we should settle down here?” Arthur asked. “Buy cattle, grow crops?”

“It’s a hard land here, sure, but there’s water close by and decent grass. Nobody around for miles. We could try.” Hosea exhaled. “Not rightly sure what Dutch would think of that.” 

“Ain’t this his dream? For all of us to settle somewhere quiet?” 

Hosea gave Arthur another long, appraising look. “You know Dutch better than that,” Hosea said, his voice pitched low. Yeah. Arthur knew Dutch better than that, even if he usually tried his best not to see it. He’d seen the hunger under Dutch’s skin, one that often fed his temper. He’d seen Dutch shoot a young woman in Blackwater because he’d wanted her out of his way. Arthur loved Dutch as he would a father, but at his age, love was no excuse for willful ignorance. 

“I do so,” Arthur said. Hosea nodded. He started to speak and turned when Mrs Grimshaw called to him and turned on his heel, straight-backed and unbowed.

#

“This a good idea?” John asked, once they were out of sight of the camp and ranging north.

“You don’t got to come,” Arthur shot back. He stroked the neck of his new horse as she snorted loudly, sensing his irritation and turning skittish. Andraste was a grey Hungarian half-bred that Arthur had caught and recently broken further to the west. Lucky find. 

“Didn’t say I didn’t want to.” 

“Didn’t ask you to,” Arthur said, and swallowed the rest of his retort. They weren’t neither of them kids no longer, and bickering was juvenile. John laughed. He’d grown from the sullen kid Hosea had found and brought on into a handsome young man, pretty even with the scars raked over his face, even under all the dust and grease and scruffy clothes. Had to be a special kinda pretty for that, fired through as it was with John’s hair-trigger temper. 

“Sure think Dutch can take care of himself,” John said, because John was like a dog with a bone once an idea managed to seep past the thick plating of his skull.

“You got a point?” 

Sarcasm never did seep past said plating. “Yeah. ‘Course. You heading up, back into Blackwater? I doubt our bounty’s been lifted any. Was hard enough sneaking south.” 

“Hosea said something about tacking along with some missionaries?” Arthur hadn’t been conscious for that bit.

John nodded. “Was just as we were skirting Blackwater. Some local gang was trying to set on some missionaries and we drove ‘em off. That was when Dutch decided it was gonna be safe to split up.” 

“Guess it worked,” Arthur said, though he still hadn’t liked that. Sean would’ve been unlikely to have been executed so quickly. He knew how the law worked. Having caught a small fish, they’d have tried to hold on to it to hook a big one. Falling silent, Arthur was glad when John finally got the hint and shut up. 

They made good time to a landmark Arthur vaguely remembered passing in his delirium, an abandoned railway station. Hitching the horses to the posts, they removed the saddles and brushed their horses down, a ritual that Arthur had always found soothing. Afterward, John started a campfire. They ate tinned rations with their legs stretched out to the fire, under a sky that was shy with its stars. 

“How’s you and Abigail doing?” Arthur asked, when he’d scraped the bottom of a can of beans and had grown bored of the silence. 

“She’s fine, I’m fine,” John said, flicking his eyes up at Arthur’s over the fire. He looked puzzled. “Why’d you ask?” 

“Well I’m thinking, I knows she wants a kid, and Dutch promised we’d all pitch in and keep anybody’s kid safe, but it might be lean times yet for a bit,” Arthur said. A husband and wife could probably get work in a big town or in one of the numerous big ranches dotted in this part of the world, enough to start a family on.

John slowly lowered his can, his mouth shiny with grease. “Why’re you telling me this and not her?”

“No need to be shy about it,” Arthur said, gesturing at John. “If she’s impatient, I mean, nevermind Dutch, I’ll support you. Hosea too.” 

“Wait, you guys think. Me and Abigail are. A thing?” John said, slow and incredulous. “Sleeping together?” 

“… you mean you ain’t?” 

“No? What even the fuck. How’d you even… Does everyone think so?” 

“Don’t know about everyone,” Arthur said, scratching his jaw. “Y’all seem mighty close.”

“We are,” John said, sounding amused and exasperated at the same time. “Abigail’s my best friend, much as I piss her off a lot and we both know she’s smarter than me and then some. Sure we’re together a lot. We like each other’s company. Though sometimes I ain’t sure what she sees in mine. What’s wrong with a man and a woman being friends?” 

“Nothing,” Arthur said, being fairly sure that he was friends with all the women in the camp. “Just well, friendship ain’t so bad a thing to start with.” 

“I don’t like her that way,” John said, very dryly and slowly. “Hell, I don’t think… I don’t think I even like women that way.” 

Arthur blinked. John had said that matter-of-factly, casual as you please, but he was tense, his feet pressed flat to the dirt. “I see,” Arthur said, glad that he sounded as casual as John had been. John stared at him for a while, and when Arthur offered nothing more, he stared hard at his tin and kept eating, chewing each mouthful reluctantly as though he could no longer taste it. 

“That tick you off?” John asked softly, when he finished and crushed the tin down. 

“Why should it?” Arthur asked, genuinely puzzled at the question, until John’s new caution finally made sense. “Jesus, John. You’re like a brother to me. What made you think I’d get ticked off?” 

“Nothing, I just.” John started to laugh. “Abigail said you wouldn’t care. Guess she was right.”

“She usually is.” 

“Abigail’s the first person I told. You’re the second.” John smiled, relieved, as though a weight had been shoved off his shoulders. 

“Honored,” Arthur said, and meant it. Arthur was glad to have John’s trust. He’d never been one for religion or morality laws, and had never seen the point of criminalising any kinda consensual sex between adults. Like a lot of laws in Arthur’s experience and opinion, it’d just felt like an exercise of power, one that made the lives of a lot of people cruel in unnecessary ways. “You always known?” 

“Since I was twelve or so, yeah.” John looked away as he said this. “Probably the way you’d always known you liked girls.”

He was getting defensive again. Arthur lay against his sleeping roll, fishing out a cigarette. “Eh well, it didn’t switch on for me like a light or nothing. Never was like that. I ain’t ever felt it was like… I wouldn’t just look at a woman and think, yeah, I’d wanna fuck that. Most of the time I don’t feel nothing.” Nothing like that, anyway. Arthur hadn’t ever grown up chasing skirts, hungry for women the way he’d seen some men get. Dutch had told Arthur that was because he’d been brought up right, but Arthur wasn’t so sure. “Used to wonder whether there was something wrong with me.” 

“I didn’t say that,” John said, pulling a face. “I don’t think that at all, Arthur.” 

“I get drawn to people,” Arthur said, ignoring John. “Have to be real drawn to them first. Hit it off, fall hard.” Only then would he feel some kinda spark, like embers slowly getting stoked into a sharp burn. 

Even then, it wasn’t often. Mary had been glad about that, even if she’d sometimes wondered out aloud if it was because of her. Arthur had just figured for a while that he was maybe broken. Something didn’t work quite right in him, the way it did for other men. Arthur had mentioned this once to Hosea, who’d shrugged and said that he didn’t see nothing wrong in something like that. _How boring the world would be if we were all the same_ , Hosea said, who hadn’t really understood what Arthur had been trying to say, but had said the right thing in return anyway. 

“Didn’t figure you for a romantic,” John said, his expression going blank. 

“Nah. Ain’t that. It’s just. I don’t even feel it. I’d look at a gorgeous woman and I’d recognise that she’s pretty, but I don’t…” Arthur made a helpless gesture. 

John mulled this over. “Sounds a lot less complicated. Kinda envy you.” 

“Nah. Ain’t nothing to envy.” Arthur was glad of it, though. He didn’t itch much for human company in general anyway. “You’re the second one I told too. Though I don’t think Hosea really got what I was trying to say.” 

“Honored,” John said, flashing a warm smile. Arthur smiled back, a reflection of John’s warmth tickling through under his skin.

#

Blackwater was still too hot for them, what with posters dotting trees near the perimeter. They slid into Armadillo instead on a late morning, keeping an eye out for the law, but the law was just an old man who greeted them with a friendly tip of his hat when they rode into town. Hitching up their horses at the stables, Arthur and John split up. They’d cased towns like this all their lives, sometimes together, sometimes not. Arthur took the salon, pushing his way into the tired silence, already soaked warm from the sun. He walked up to the bar and bought a drink.

The bartender poured him a finger of whisky and went back to polishing glasses. He was young, barely out of his teens. A black and white cat with a scarred cheek hopped up onto the counter as Arthur raised the glass, slinking over and rubbing itself with a purr against Arthur’s arm. Arthur tickled it under its chin. 

“He likes you,” said the bartender. 

“I get that a lot,” Arthur said, flashing a smile. He drank. 

“I reckon.” The bartender flushed a little, his eyes flicking over Arthur’s face in a way Arthur recognised. He pretended not to notice, stroking the arched back of the cat. 

“I’m new to these parts, passing through. Anything worth knowing?” 

“Oh aye, we hear things. Me da’ runs the night shift. Lot of trappers come by this way. Mail coach too. Uh. Davey’s ranch been raided, days back. Bad business. A mail coach got stood up near Blackwater but the bandits got driven off. Uh, and I heard some missionaries got hassled near the border, but they got through to Chiquito all right.”

“That so,” Arthur said. 

“Yeah, one of them has got a sister living here in Armadillo, sent a letter to tell her he was all right. Some Good Samaritans helped them out, apparently.”

“So it ain’t all that bad in the world.” Arthur drank. “Heard there were big gangs around this part of the world. Like the O’Driscolls. Or the Van der Linde.” 

“Oh, them?” The bartender shrugged. “Ain’t this far to the west for sure.” 

Arthur caught up with John outside the general store. John shook his head, with a nod at the sheriff’s office. “Dutch’s poster is in there,” John said, with a low voice, “but not yours or any of the rest of us.” 

“Funny.” 

“Ain’t funny at all. Sheriff said it was a ‘known fact’ that Dutch van der Linde’s been moving east. Witnesses saw him and a bunch of men robbing the bank over at Valentine.”

“Shit.” What the hell was Dutch thinking? “Okay. We head east. Try to catch up.” John shot him a long look. “What?” 

“He knows where we went. Yet he’s going east.” 

“And so?” 

“So I reckon maybe we ain’t part of his plan no more,” John said evenly. 

Arthur scowled. “Let’s go,” he said curtly. He held his tongue until they’d ridden a way out of town, then he said, “Bullshit.”

“Ain’t bullshit. Think about it.”

“Leaving Hosea? Mrs Grimshaw? The rest of us? He wouldn’t.” 

“So where’s he then? Why’s he headed east, not south?” 

Arthur spat to a side. “Maybe he’s in trouble,” Arthur said, though that sounded shaky to Arthur. They’d been in worse trouble before, and Blackwater wasn’t that hard to skirt if you rode hard and kept your head down. 

“Sure, Arthur,” John said, his voice heavy with doubt. 

“You wanna go back south, go. I’m headed east.”

“Leaving Hosea? Mrs Grimshaw? The rest of us?” John narrowed his eyes as Arthur glared at him, but didn’t drop his stare. Arthur bit out an oath and kept to a stony silence as they rode. He wanted a smoke, but he didn’t much feel like calming his nerves. As they got to the poster-peppered trees closer to Blackwater, Arthur exhaled loudly. Committing east past this point was gonna take hard riding and luck. It did mean leaving everyone else to their devices for a long while. 

“Fuck,” Arthur said. John eyed him in silence. “Okay. We tried.” Arthur let out a long breath, forced past gritted teeth. “Let’s head back.”

#

Arthur tipped up his hat in surprise as John climbed up to the lookout, balancing plates of stew. “Tilly put you to work?” Arthur asked, getting up to accept a plate and a spoon.

“Sadie did, actually. Said I should stop scaring the cattle.” John settled down on one of the small crates next to Arthur.

“You do seem to do that.” 

“Fuck you, Arthur,” John said, though he grinned and started to eat. 

Arthur leaned back in the chair. He didn’t usually take lookout duty, but he’d wanted some time today to think. The camp below them was less of a transient thing now, months in. They were starting to build. There was a pigpen, a small paddock for goats, a vegetable garden, latrines. Mrs Grimshaw and Uncle had been considering buying something “prefab”—apparently, there were houses you could assemble out of bits you bought from a store. Further out over sprawl of land were the white scattered dots of a modest herd of cattle, with the roving dots of Sadie and Lenny close by. Javier and Charles had just come back on a supply run. 

Still no word from Dutch.

“He ain’t dead,” John said. 

“What?”

“Dutch.” 

“I didn’t think so, no.” Dutch was too canny for that. Especially if he was traveling light.

John stared at him for a beat, then he dug a crumpled wad of paper from under his coat, handing it over. It was a newspaper, late of Saint Denis, dated a week back. “Friend of Charles sent this to Chiquito.” 

“Charles told people where we were?” 

“ _You’ve_ been sending telegrams to Saint Denis. I’m guessing Charles thought one more or so wouldn’t hurt.” 

Arthur let out a grunt. He couldn’t fault that logic, even if it irked him. And he did know that Charles kept in contact with a Lakota tribe that often had business in Saint Denis. Carefully, Arthur unfolded the paper. On the front page, dense with copy, there was an article about a robbery near Rhodes. A house had been looted and burned down, one that belonged to a prominent family. Prime suspects: Dutch van der Linde and his gang. 

“What the fuck,” Arthur said, blinking. That didn’t sound much like Dutch’s style. Banks, trains, mail coaches, sure. But a family? In a way that clearly got Dutch recognised? “You show this to Hosea?”

“Charles showed it to Hosea first. He asked me to pass it up to you.” 

“Where’s Hosea now?” Arthur peered over the edge at the camp. 

“Thinking, he said.” 

There. Hosea was saddling up. Arthur wolfed down the rest of his stew and motioned for John to take over watch. He caught up with Hosea when they were passing the herd, Sadie glancing up at them as they went. 

“We going somewhere?” Arthur asked. 

Hosea eyed him with a quick, tired smile. “River out east has some decent fishing.” 

“Okay.” Arthur wasn’t much for fishing, not like how Hosea was. He fished to eat, and had no real love for the sport of it. 

They found a small rowboat hidden badly under palm fronds and pushed the boat into the water, their horses hitched up behind them to trunks. Was a nice day for fishing at least, and they were the only people on the river. Arthur rowed out where he was directed. Caught fish while listening to Hosea ramble on about the one time he’d been in Mexico when he was younger. 

Arthur was reeling in his second fish when Hosea sighed. “About Dutch,” he said. 

“Yeah?” 

“You read it, I’m guessing.” 

“I did.” When Hosea said nothing, Arthur said, “Sure he’s got his reasons.” 

“You think?”

“He always has before,” Arthur said. He glanced at Hosea, trying to gauge his mood.

Hosea stared at the water. “Yeah, you would think that.” 

“Am I wrong?” 

“I don’t know, Arthur. I’ve been running with Dutch a long time. Since we were John’s age, even. I like to think there’s good and there’s bad in him, just like anyone, and sometimes the bad parts win out.” Hosea looked tired as he said it. “Just like in Blackwater.” 

“Ain’t any of us here angels,” Arthur said. He knew what Hosea meant. Mary had said as much about Arthur. It’d been the reason she’d left him—she’d said that there was some good in him, but a lot of bad too, and Arthur couldn’t fault that observation. He’d killed his first man when he was fifteen and hadn’t stopped since. 

“Thing is. You, me, John, Charles, the others… we’re aware of that. We see the shadow in our souls. We try—to different degrees—to keep it in check where we can. There are people who don’t care to, like Micah and Bill. And then there’s Dutch, who doesn’t see the shadow at all.” 

“Suppose so,” Arthur said, though he wasn’t sure if he agreed. Dutch had done mostly right by them as long as Arthur could remember. Sure, Blackwater was a bad call, but. Things didn’t seem as bad as all that. 

“We’ve started a good thing here,” Hosea said, casting another line. “As the days go by, I think. Maybe it ain’t so bad, if Dutch never comes looking.” 

“You mean that?” 

“I don’t rightly know,” Hosea said, His mouth twitched. “Loyalty’s a strange thing. But I’ve been loyal a long time and now I’m old, with nearly nothing to my name but a bunch of fractious people, all of whom I’d like to see living safer, more peaceful lives than the one I’ve led. I’d like to see more people brought in, other people like us who don’t fit well anywhere else. Families starting. Chased around by the law like dogs, ain’t a life for no one.” 

“Suppose so,” Arthur said, who hadn’t known any better life than that. He hadn’t much of a comparison. The life he’d had before Hosea and Dutch had taken him in had been violent and brutal too; the only difference being that he’d been helpless to be anything more than a victim. 

“Be kind to John,” Hosea said, reeling in his line slowly to make it jump in the water. 

“When haven’t I been?” 

Hosea’s eyes flicked briefly to Arthur’s face. “You haven’t seen it?” 

“Seen what?” Arthur asked, puzzled. 

“Come on. Even Dutch’s seen it. Boy’s been sweet on you all his life.” 

“You don’t mind that?” Arthur said, surprised. John had…? 

Hosea lifted a shoulder into a shrug. “It’s a big world and nobody out there’s the same. The two of you are like sons to me and something like this won’t change that. Way I see it, the government deciding that men can only marry women, and even then, only coloured people with coloured people, whites with whites… it’s just another example of what happens when a small number of men grow sick with power. They split people up, set them on each other, just so nobody else notices how bad things are for everyone.”

“Ain’t that why Dutch wanted to make something new? Away from it all?”

“That was the idea. So I thought.” Hosea shook his head. “Well, now we have it. A settlement, not just another camp. You don’t see Dutch having come running. Even though he has to know.” 

Back at the camp—settlement—Arthur handed over the fish to Pearson and climbed back up to where John sat. “Good talk?” John asked. 

“It’s Hosea.” Arthur sat down beside John, tried not to make it obvious that he was staring. _John_ was sweet on _Arthur_? Sure, John had tagged along behind Arthur for most of his childhood, but it wasn’t as though many of the others had the patience for kids. They’d grown more distant over time, especially when John had randomly run off for a year in a snit over something or other. 

“Any decision about Dutch?” 

“Reckon we’d wait and see whether he comes to us.” 

John nodded. He couldn’t quite hide his relief, relaxing as he looked back out over the settlement. “Reckon we should.” 

Arthur could see Karen making her way up for her roster at the watch. “Let’s ride out for a bit,” Arthur told John. “Shoot some game.” 

John lit up. “Sure.”

#

As the settlement got more established, people drifted in. A hard-eyed Lipan woman and her young daughter, both of whom would only speak to Charles for weeks until they’d slowly warmed to everyone else. They would not speak of what had happened to make them drifters. A tall and rangy vaquero who’d just arrived one day on a sturdy little horse and hadn’t left. Few others.

Arthur sat on the lookout and sketched. First, the rows of modest houses, cobbled together cheap, painted white and blue. The horses grazing in a paddock. The Lipan kid was putting her new pony through its paces—Javier had found and caught it for her a week or so back. The Reverend was sitting by a fresh-dug well with a wandering preacher who’d been blown by the day before, a handsome black man in a gray coat and a red scarf. The dotted herd beyond, grazing under Sadie’s watch. 

“Gonna rain,” John said, climbing up. He had biscuits to share, sweet ones. 

“Yeah, I could see that.” Arthur savoured the sugar on his tongue, the artificial sweetness. Must’ve been bought recently from Chiquito. “Mary-Beth all right?”

“Cough’s clearing up.” That was the bad thing about being isolated out here. No doctors. “Hey, uh. Listen, Arthur.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m thinking we should ride out again sometime.” 

Arthur scratched his jaw. “We don’t need to rely on game that much now.” 

“Thought you liked the quiet?” 

“I do, but…” Arthur straightened up. There was a cloud of dust on the horizon, coming in fast. “John. You stay up top.” 

John went from weirdly nervy to all business in a shot. He nodded, taking Arthur’s rifle. Arthur let himself down as quickly as he could, cursing as he nearly slipped down the rope ladder. As he forged into the camp, Charles drifted over with a questioning look that turned blank as Arthur made a circling gesture with his hand. No point freaking everyone out yet. Hopefully. He melted away toward the well, a defensible location in the camp.

Hosea met Arthur at the paddock. They saddled up and rode out toward the dust. It turned out to be Kieran, of all people, driving a few rangy goats before him. “Hosea. Arthur,” Kieran said, managing an awkward smile over the bleating goats. 

“Kieran,” Arthur said. He kept his hand loose over his holster. “Where’re the others?” 

“Working near Saint Denis, last I saw,” Kieran said.

“And you left?” Hosea said, in the deceptively kindly way he got. 

“Yeah, I left.” Kieran stared at the both of them, pale and clearly frightened but determined. “I left because things were going bad. I ain’t for murdering women.” 

“An O’Driscoll who ain’t for murder?” Arthur snorted.

“Ain’t that no more. And if y’all still don’t trust me, I’ll keep on riding. These down here, they’re a gift, that’s all. For Mrs Grimshaw and the others, who were kind to me after a while.” Kieran nodded at the goats. 

“How’d you find us?” Hosea asked. 

“I knew Dutch got a telegram out of Chiquito. It wasn’t real hard, listening to people talk. I understand enough Spanish to get by. Overheard someone talking about how an old drunk with lumbago said there was a big new ranch out here.” 

Arthur palmed a hand over his face. “Fucking Uncle.” 

“Yeah well, nobody in town seemed to believe the rumour. You guys had that much going for you.” Kieran twisted his hands over his pommel. “Dutch… he’s a smart man, a great man, sure. But there’s something gone odd in him, I reckon. He’s been taking bigger, riskier jobs. Planning on a heist in Saint Denis, on the bank there.”

Hosea blinked. “The Saint Denis bank? It’s impossible. I’ve cased it before. Too many things can go wrong.” 

“I think Dutch don’t care about things going wrong no more. He’s got Pinkertons on his tail, the law out of Valentine and Rhodes, and yeah, Colm O’Driscoll’s still out there. I saw some of the boys sniffing about and. All in all, I thought it was best I left.” Kieran dropped his eyes. 

Arthur let out a long and angry breath and glanced at Hosea. “Your call.” 

Hosea looked uncomfortably older, as though shrunken in on himself. “Dutch… Dutch. I… all right. All right, Kieran. You can stay if you make yourself useful.” He was quiet on the ride back and shook his head when Arthur made as if to talk, walking over to Mrs Grimshaw instead to have a word. Arthur foisted Kieran off on Abigail and headed back up to the lookout. 

“Kieran?” John said, once Arthur pulled himself up.

“And goats.” 

“Dutch?” 

“Nah.” 

John nodded, settling back in the chair. Arthur sat down beside him and was leafing through his journal before it struck him—the easy understanding between them that had been there all through them growing up was back. From before Arthur had taken on more responsibilities in the gang, from before John had grown more and more into an angry and sullen young man, one who’d lit off in the middle of the night without a word. Arthur had missed it. 

“You’re real good,” John said, peering over Arthur’s shoulder at his sketches. 

“Thanks,” Arthur muttered. He’d never been particularly comfortable accepting praise for his sketches. When he’d first started drawing, Dutch and Hosea had been so amazed that they’d taken to proudly showing off his drawings around camp, hell, even to random strangers. That’d been mighty embarrassing. Now Arthur only drew when it was quiet and safe. 

John hummed. He didn’t press, instead leaning against Arthur, tentative at first, then in a slouch when Arthur didn’t budge. It should’ve been uncomfortably warm, but Arthur welcomed the intimacy instead, the closeness. Even with the number of times they clashed, Arthur _had_ grown up with John. Maybe that was why they fit so easily. He listened to John’s breathing slow, felt John rub his cheek absently against Arthur’s shoulder. Now that it’d been pointed out to him, John’s regard was pretty goddamned obvious. As was Arthur’s. 

“We should take the horses out for a bit,” Arthur said. 

“Where?”

“Wherever,” Arthur said. John made a low rumbling sound of assent, a belly-deep purr.

#

Arthur first kissed John behind the bar in Chiquito, a little drunk, a lot curious. John went stiff and still, even as Arthur hauled him deeper into the alley behind some crates, pinning him against the wall of the bar. Whisky on their breath and on their tongues. “Hosea put you up to this?” John whispered, as Arthur kissed the edge of his mouth.

“Why’d he do that?” Arthur asked, his puzzlement genuine enough that John let out a shaky breath and pressed into the next kiss, his hands clutching at Arthur’s shoulders.

“I thought you said you didn’t feel nothing.” 

Arthur snorted. “You turn your brain off when I talk or what? That’s not all that I said.” 

“Kinda thought you only liked women,” John said, his fingers trailing appreciatively over Arthur’s broad shoulders. 

“ _Now_ I know you ain’t been listening. I said I like people. Sure it takes some going for most, but you’ve had a hell of a head start.” 

John bit out a disbelieving stuttered laugh. He nuzzled Arthur’s throat, brushing soft kisses as though he wasn’t sure if Arthur was gonna pull back at any moment. Flinched then hissed in pleasure as Arthur kneaded his ass. “Probably shouldn’t be doing this here,” John said, his breath hot against Arthur’s cheek. 

“Yeah, probably.” Arthur kissed John again, licking his way in. He took a while to get into the mood, always had, but Arthur liked to kiss. It was intimacy he liked, in all its variant functions. The warmth and scent of someone else so close, their eagerness. Someone who’d linger on in Arthur’s mind when they weren’t there, haunting him with their absence. Someone like John.

“C’mon, let’s. _Arthur_.” John was trying not to laugh. Joy trembled under his skin, pulling at his mouth. They all but tumbled back out to the main street where their horses were, mounting up to ride out of Chiquito into the night. Still a little drunk, this time on each other. 

They rode out to the old railway station. Over time, Arthur had made a few adjustments to it, put in a better lock, reinforced the windows, hidden supplies under the floorboards. He liked to use it as a halfway point whenever he felt like ranging further, or just somewhere quiet where he could sit and drink and sketch. John had been here a couple of times now and knew the drill, hitching up horses, removing saddles and brushing them down. The easy quiet between them felt charged with promise. Anticipation tickled its way under Arthur’s skin in a rare if familiar way. They ate rations in a playful rush, sitting close enough that their knees and flanks were pressed against each other. 

John kissed Arthur’s throat as he was considering knocking out some coffee, climbing into Arthur’s lap as Arthur merely grumbled and set the tin of powder aside. Warm fingers skittered against Arthur’s throat, against the knot of his bandana, the buttons of his shirt. Arthur rubbed his palms over the hard muscle packed over John’s thighs, his trim waist. They kissed under idle stars until the campfire started winking out. Then John got reluctantly to his feet, hauling Arthur to his. 

Arthur kept a spare bedroll in the railway station in a cleared out section where old crates served for a desk and chairs. They didn’t contain anything remotely valuable—all that was hidden under the floorboards in a corner. Arthur closed the door and wedged it shut with a crate, tossing his hat onto another, lighting the hooded lantern he kept by the bedroll. They stripped down with unflinching ease, tracing familiar marks. There was nothing to explain—they already knew the stories of each other’s scars. 

John pressed Arthur down on the bedroll, grinning. His lanky hair was growing long again, loose over his scarred face and shoulders. Arthur let him look his fill. “You’re gorgeous,” John whispered.

“I know,” Arthur said, winking. 

That broke what was left of John’s tension. He laughed. “And also such an ass,” he said fondly, hunkering down to kiss Arthur on the mouth. 

“I also know that you like my ass,” Arthur said, and felt John growl against him, tickling his flanks. Arthur yelped, twisting out of the way and banging his shoulder against a crate, nearly toppling a spare box of cigarettes off and onto his face. Cursing, he wrestled John off, trying to pin his hands, and this was ridiculous, John was ridiculous, and yet Arthur couldn’t quite kiss that gorgeous smirk off John’s face. He didn’t want to. He rubbed his thumbs against John’s nipples and John bucked against him with a gasp, striping his hands down Arthur’s back. 

John made an inquiring noise as he pressed a thigh between Arthur’s legs and found him still only stirring. “I’ll catch up,” Arthur said, because he knew he was going to get there. He laced the fingers of one hand with John’s and spat in the other, grasping them both with his long fingers. This was the first time he’d ever cared to do this with another guy, but the mechanics seemed easy enough, watching John whine and buck against him and scratch his blunt nails down Arthur’s arms. Arthur drank John in, his adoration and desperation both, desire welling higher like the tides, slow and inexorable. 

John whispered against his throat in thin gasps. “Jesus, Arthur. _Jesus_.” Arthur chuckled. He rocked against John, holding him close. John’s hands slipped against his ribs, raked through sweat. Their cocks caught against each other in a broken rhythm and somehow they still fit, John’s mouth tucked against his cheek, Arthur’s grazing John’s jaw. John’s stubble was rough against his tongue, his teeth. He licked sweat off his throat, chased John’s hammering pulse. John let out a soft noise and shuddered to a stop against Arthur, his hips straining, soiling them both. Arthur pressed into the wet liquid, swiping his knuckles through it, breathing in the sex-sweat scent of it, the musk of their bodies. He was getting close, his body wrung tight but nowhere near enough.

With a low snarl, John flipped them over. He bit Arthur hard on his throat, making Arthur lock up against him with a yowl of indignation. John bit down Arthur’s body, raked his nails against Arthur’s thighs. He swiped his tongue through the mess and swallowed Arthur’s cock, throat working to take in as much as he could, sucking with hoarse muffled groans. Pain and shock and pleasure looped into a tight rush and Arthur was stringing his fingers through John’s hair, holding him still as he pulsed over John’s tongue. 

Cleaned up, the room still stank of sweat. They curled over the bedroll anyway, yawning. “Arthur,” John said, sleepy. He tickled his fingertips over the tawny hair on Arthur’s arm, which Arthur slung across John’s belly. 

“John,” Arthur murmured, mouth tucked over John’s hair.

#

“We’ve been here long enough,” Mrs Grimshaw said, hands on her hips. She’d called a gang meeting beside the well, only she hadn’t called it a gang meeting. Community meeting, that’s what she’d said. Arthur thought that fit better.

“Aye, and?” Hosea asked. He’d been busy carving toys for the baby Tilly was expecting with the wandering preacher, and the latest unfinished product was still in his hands, a little horse. “I hope you’re not suggesting we leave.”

“No, of course not. I reckon the opposite. I reckon we’ve been here long enough that it ain’t right this place ain’t got a name. I want some suggestions, and I want the best put up to a vote,” Mrs Grimshaw said. 

“She got a point,” John said. He was standing with Abigail, both of them in stained overalls from working the growing vegetable field. 

“When hasn’t she ever?” Arthur agreed. He folded his arms, leaning against the well. “Have at it then.” He glanced at Javier, the vaqueros, and the Lipan women. “Maybe you guys should have top pick. Since it’s your land and all.” 

Javier glanced at the Lipan women, who shrugged. The mother said something to Charles, who listened intently for a moment before translating. “She says they may not stay, and your names are all the same to them. The land forgets.” 

The vaqueros and Javier had a laughing argument in Spanish. The Reverend and the wandering preacher favoured Saint Maria, except that Mary-Beth was fairly sure there were ‘hundreds’ of places called Saint Maria. “That’s the point,” said the wandering preacher, who didn’t wander much any longer nowadays. He smiled and put an arm around Tilly’s waist. 

“Now settle down, settle down,” Hosea said plaintively, as people started shouting names at random.

John looked at Abigail, who laughed and shook her head. He drifted over to Arthur instead, dusting his palms off his knees. “Not gonna put your hat in the ring?” John asked, as Mrs Grimshaw started calling for order. 

“Nah.” Arthur said. He shifted closer, nudging his shoulder against John’s, as they watched all of their family get drawn into the debate. Whatever name they chose, this was already a real home to him—his first and last. “I’m good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Story title from Brandi Carlile's song of the same title.  
> \--  
> Twitter: @manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Artist Woes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18099818) by [johanirae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/johanirae/pseuds/johanirae)




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